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  Some years later, when Angus was well into the business, he walked into the Crazy Horse on his regular night, wearing an Armani suit, a gold Rolex speckled with diamonds and a pink-diamond pinkie ring as big as your knuckle. Most of the strippers approached him only as a last resort, but not Gia, the new girl. The first thing she said was “Wow, what a cutie!” and they both laughed. They went in the Champagne Room and she said, “I’m gonna make you cum in your pants.” She nearly succeeded too. He kept her there until closing time paying for lap dances ten at a time with hundred-dollar bills. They talked while she straddled him and ground her sex into his.

  “I bet you do something illegal for a living,” she said.

  “Then you’d win the bet,” he replied.

  She mashed her tits into his face. “I love dangerous men.” He had to pull back so he could catch a breath. “I bet you have a nickname,” she said.

  “Top Gun,” Angus said.

  “Oh, baby.” She laughed. “We’re going to get along just fine.”

  Angus estimated he’d spent five grand on lap dances before she agreed to see him outside the club and another five before she’d fuck him. She’d look at him while they did it, talking dirty in a steady stream. Come on you ugly motherfucker give it to me give it to me harder, harder you fucking monster, stick it in so deep I can feel it in my toes. His ugliness didn’t matter because it was acknowledged. You’re ugly and I’m a whore. Why should that stop us from having fun? If you have money, you’re Val Kilmer, Steven Seagal, or anybody you wanted to be. Maybe you don’t have a star on the Walk of Fame but you could buy the fucking sidewalk all the way to the ocean. They had Christiana but he didn’t want to think about that.

  Isaiah entered the deli through the back. Angus had a napkin tucked into his collar and was demolishing an enormous sandwich, his lips shining with grease. He was talking to Sidero with his mouth full.

  “Two entire crates of PX4s and you don’t know what happened to them?” Angus said.

  “I told you already,” Sidero said, tired of hearing this. “I never got them. I waited at the warehouse for three hours. I called Dwight. He didn’t know anything so I called Tyler. He said there was a problem.”

  “Did you ask him what the problem was?” Angus asked impatiently.

  “No.”

  “Well why the hell not?”

  “Because he was busy and didn’t have time to explain,” Sidero replied. “And by the time I called him back he was, you know—dead.” Dwight coughed to stifle a laugh and then laughed outright.

  “Get out of here, you fucking idiot!” Angus shouted at Sidero. He threw his napkin at him, adding, “Go sit in the goddamn car.” Sidero shrugged, smiling as he passed Isaiah without a word. Dwight had a toothpick in his mouth, swiveling it around and smirking, one foot tapping on the floor. He gave Isaiah a look. You’ll get yours, asshole. Isaiah had the feeling Dwight was capable of anything. Hugo was at a table near the front. Plates were scattered around him, littered with bones, bread crusts, empty bowls, congealed gravy and miscellaneous scraps. It looked like the other cavemen had just left.

  “You want something?” Angus said as Isaiah sat down. “Food’s good here. I come here two, three times a week. No place like it in my fruity neighborhood. Try the Reuben. It’ll give you a coronary but it’s worth it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Christiana?” Isaiah said.

  “I thought you should find out for yourself,” Angus said. “What did you think?”

  “What do I think?” Isaiah said, “I think it’s impossible! Five alters? Five? I’ll have to interview all of them and if they show up and if they saw something and if they tell the truth, it may or may not add up to something. Did you know there’s nothing on the video except Christiana and Tyler?”

  “Yeah, it’s a problem.” Angus took a bite so big, he looked like a boa constrictor swallowing a pig. “I’m still surprised the killer got him. Tyler knew his shit.”

  “There were two hitters,” Isaiah said. “They worked as a team. Have you ever heard of something like that?” Angus stopped chewing and thought a moment.

  “No. Never.”

  “They were professionals,” Isaiah said, “and that lets off Lok. He would have sent his own people and they’d have shot Tyler in a drive-by or a walk-up.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Angus was focused on the sandwich again, chewing and chomping and grinding and gulping. It looked like a lot of work. Sauerkraut and cheese oozed from between his yellow teeth. “But that’s not my problem.”

  “It is your problem,” Isaiah retorted. “How am I supposed to find two professional killers who aren’t on video, left no evidence and may or may not have been seen by five different personalities? It’s not possible, Angus, and you know it.”

  “Did you tell him about the deadline?” Dwight said.

  “I’m getting to it,” Angus snapped. “If you’d shut up and let me.”

  “What deadline?” Isaiah said.

  Angus found another napkin and wiped the grease off his mustache. He said, “If the police arrest Christiana, it means they’ve made the case. She’ll be in the system, locked up. She won’t last a week, and for murder she may not get bail. You have until then.”

  “Until—but they could arrest her tomorrow,” Isaiah said. “They could arrest her now.”

  “That’s my point,” Angus said. “Get your ass moving, Isaiah. You know I don’t bluff.” He threw the napkin down on his plate. “Let’s go.”

  They went out the back door, Hugo and Dwight leading the way. Hugo hesitated at the door, looking around for possible attackers. If there were any, Isaiah thought, they wouldn’t be where you could see them.

  “Even if I find the hitters, what then?” Isaiah said. “I’m supposed to convince the police when there’s nothing to convince them with? This is a dead end, Angus. Whatever happens happens.”

  Angus turned to face him. Tufts of white hair were sticking out of his nose; the mustard and corned-beef smell was sickening. “I’ll tell you what’s not going to happen,” Angus said. “My daughter is not going to prison.” His voice was gravelly, the big startled eyes narrowing into cut marks. You could see the fury rising in him, this stooped old man who could sell death as easily as an ice cream cone. “Do you understand?” he said. “Do you understand?” There were flecks of spit at the corners of his mouth, his chest expanding with every breath. “DO YOU?”

  Isaiah held his gaze and said nothing. Angus whirled around, got in the car and slammed the door. Hugo got in. “Get to it, asshole,” Dwight said. He cracked his knuckles. “Or you’re fucked.” He spat out his toothpick and got in the car.

  “Drive, Sidero,” Angus snapped. “What are you waiting for? Your nose to heal?”

  Isaiah watched the Maybach sail away, a white cruise ship on an ocean of gray asphalt. He wondered if Angus was, on some level, happy with his life. If the intrigue and violence were downsides or perks. What did Angus enjoy? The power, no doubt. But that was transactional. He obviously loved his daughter, but who loved him back? The dog. It was always the dog.

  Isaiah was getting in his car when a black Navigator with spinning chrome rims went speeding past. Isaiah recognized the car. Guda was driving and Guda was one of Lok’s gang. Isaiah called Angus.

  “A black Navigator’s coming up behind you, Ponlok’s crew,” Isaiah said. He heard gunshots and the call went dead. He heard more gunshots. Very close. He got in the Audi and raced out of the lot.

  The Maybach had crashed through a chain-link fence. The front two wheels hung over a wide cement culvert. Hugo was shooting from behind the car, Dwight hunched down, a gun on the ground beside him. He was cursing and patting his pockets—out of ammo. Sidero was in the driver’s seat, lying sideways, trapped by his seat belt. Bullets were smashing through the windshield, showering him with broken glass. “Help! Help me!” he screamed. “Get me out of here!”

  Guda and another guy named Tag were shooting at th
em from behind a parked truck. They had extra ammo, timing the clip changes so the salvo was nearly continuous. Angus was in the culvert itself. He stumbled toward a big drainpipe and disappeared inside. If Guda and Tag got around Hugo, Angus would be trapped in there.

  Isaiah drove past, made a turn and parked in an alley. He went to the trunk and opened a plastic box labeled WEAPONS. He hated firearms but there were times when he needed to defend himself. The pepperball gun was out of ammo but he did have a gun. A potato gun. A pistol, to be exact. He’d made it himself from PVC pipe, some couplers, epoxy, a ball valve and a CO2 cartridge. It looked like an oversize Luger put together by a drunk plumber. Potatoes rot, so the ammunition was made by putting a dollop of epoxy in the same piping as the barrel and letting it harden. The resulting ammo was like oversize rabbit pellets as big around as a nickel. The gun was surprisingly powerful against soda cans and vegetables. Isaiah had never fired the one-shot contraption at a person.

  There was a manhole in the middle of the alley. Isaiah used a crowbar from the trunk and pried it open. Then he climbed down the ladder into the drainpipe, two inches of mossy, smelly water trickling through it. Isaiah could almost stand upright. He had used the manhole as an escape hatch before, but he’d come in through the drainpipe end. He jogged into the dark, keeping his head low. Angus was coming toward him, the sunlight behind him.

  “Who’s that?” Angus said, terrified.

  “Isaiah.”

  “What? What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your shitty life,” Isaiah said. He saw Guda’s silhouette at the entrance to the drainpipe. “Lie down,” Isaiah said.

  “Lie down in this muck?” Angus said.

  Isaiah couldn’t waste time arguing so he judo-tripped Angus into the slimy green water.

  “Fuck, it’s filthy!” Angus said.

  “Get as low as you can,” Isaiah said. “Do it if you want to stay alive.” Isaiah leaned against the wall and conformed his back to the curve of the pipe.

  “What’s that you’ve got?” Angus said.

  “A potato gun.”

  “Potato gun?”

  “Shut up, will you?”

  Isaiah and Angus were just out of the sunlight’s reach. Guda would have to be pretty close to see them. His silhouette was getting larger but it was large already. Guda was huge. Six feet, two forty if he was naked and hadn’t eaten breakfast. He’d spent years in the yard at Corcoran lifting weights and doing one-handed push-ups with his feet up on a wall. You wondered how he got through a door or put on his pants.

  “Angus?” Guda called out. “I’m coming for you, asshole.” He was closer still. You could make out the gun in his hand. The maximum range for the potato pistol was about forty feet, but the impact would be greater the closer he was. Isaiah wondered if rabbit pellets made out of epoxy would have any effect on a walking condominium.

  Guda saw the shaft of light coming down from the manhole. “Shit,” he said, probably thinking Angus had already escaped. Guda jogged forward, water splashing on the sides of the culvert. He was fifty feet away…forty…thirty…twenty…He saw them. He raised his gun and Isaiah shot him in the face.

  “Fucker!” Guda shouted. The pellet was far from lethal but it hurt like a son of a bitch. Guda turned away, his gun falling in the water. Isaiah charged. He kicked the big man in the back of the knee and he fell to his knees. He was trying to get up and turn around. Isaiah threw a punch, a glancing blow. Guda caught his wrist, his grip like a car crusher. He whipped Isaiah around in front of him and slung him into the wall.

  Guda got up. He was more monstrous in the dark than he was in the daylight. Isaiah went into a defensive crouch, one hand held open at his left cheek, the other in front of his face. Guda came at him, slogging through the water with his hands out in front of him, ready to grab. Isaiah stepped between them and threw a punch but Guda leaned away. Then he hit Isaiah so hard all the air left his lungs in one heaving wheeze. Isaiah fell backward into the water and in an instant Guda was on top of him, his huge hands around Isaiah’s neck, shoving his head underwater. He writhed and choked on the filthy water.

  Guda’s weight was unyielding. He hauled Isaiah up for one sputtering breath and plunged him back under the water. I’m going to drown. I’m going to die! Again, Guda hauled him up, screamed something in his face, and then stopped and stared in disbelief.

  “Isaiah?” Guda said. “IQ?” Isaiah was too waterlogged to answer. Guda grinned and laughed. “You helped out my sister, Emmy! Remember you kept her outta jail? She was looking at five to ten, she got kids and everything!” He lifted Isaiah out of the water and beamed. “Come on, get up. Shit, Isaiah. You my boy!”

  Angus called. The first words out of his mouth were “This doesn’t change the deal.”

  “I didn’t think it did,” Isaiah said.

  “Tell me something,” Angus said. “Why did you do it? If I was dead you’d be free and clear.”

  “You wouldn’t get it.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. It would require some understanding of human decency.”

  “I owe you,” Angus said grudgingly. “But it doesn’t change the deal.”

  Hugo had done well, Angus thought. The big oaf had balls and a good thing too. Dwight was a vicious son of a bitch, but stupid as a goldfish. And fucking Sidero. Help me! Somebody help me! The pussy. For all his Nazi bullshit he was a goddamn coward. One fat, tough motherfucker like Hugo was worth a hundred cunts like him. Every day Angus thought about kicking Sidero out into the cold, cruel world but he’d made a promise, goddammit. One of the few he’d kept.

  The attack had shaken him. That gook bastard Ponlok had nearly gotten him. The Mexican and black gangs were bad enough, but since when did the Asians get into the mix? In Angus’s day, Asians were the “good” minority, the kids who sat at the front of the class, raised their hands all the time, dressed like Beaver Cleaver and made robots for the science fair right after cello practice. Except for Jackie Chan and that chick on Hawaii Five-0, Asians were boring.

  Angus had seen UC Irvine students riding to school on their bicycles. Was there some kind of law that made them wear ugly glasses and a backpack? And those haircuts. There must be a barber somewhere who specialized in the gulag look.

  That Isaiah saved Angus’s life was confusing. Why would he do something like that? The human decency thing was a bunch of hooey; no one’s that goody-goody—well, except for Virginia. If Angus had been in Isaiah’s position, he would have driven away, thanking his unbelievably good luck. All the shit Angus had seen in his life, he thought there was nothing left to surprise him. Isaiah did. Was he really going to return the favor? Not unless it cost him nothing. Not unless it played to his advantage.

  Isaiah’s clothes were drenched with sewer water and he tossed them in the trash. He threw up twice. He took a shower, dressed and put on some music to settle himself down. The case. There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen before but he’d never heard of a team of hit men. A second person was another variable, somebody else to control and communicate with; somebody else to make a mistake or rat you out. Isaiah wondered if he was interpreting the clues correctly. Was it really a two-man job?

  Most of the employment opportunities for contract killers were in the drug world. Take out a rival, a rat, a thief, or someone who cheated you on a deal. There were the gangs, of course, but they used people from their membership lists. The problem: how to identify the killers. If they were professionals, they were also professional at laying low.

  Isaiah could find out himself but asking Dodson was quicker. He was a former drug dealer and had better connections. Isaiah was hesitant. Did he really want to hook up with his belligerent semi ex-partner, who always needed affirmation and tried to prove they were equals? It was Isaiah’s one conceit: No one was better at what he did, even though what he did didn’t have a name. PI didn’t quite capture it. It was for Stella, so he made the call. “I need your help,” he said.

&
nbsp; “Say the word,” Dodson said. He was a little too eager, not like him at all. Even if he was eager, he’d usually put up some kind of resistance or make it about something else.

  “I need to find two hitters,” Isaiah said. “They work together. A team.” He told Dodson about Angus, Christiana, Sidero and the Starks. He told him about the circumstances of Tyler’s murder and his theory about the MO.

  “Damn, man,” Dodson said, “I never heard of shit like that.”

  “I need to know who these people are,” Isaiah said. “Can you reach out for me?”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” Dodson said. “But let’s say I hook up with somebody that knows ’em. They’re not gonna tell me how to find them.”

  Dodson was right. Isaiah thought a moment. He was never going to locate the hitters himself. Which meant the hitters had to come to him. “Ask your contact to send a message,” Isaiah said.

  “To the killers?” Dodson said. “What message is that?”

  “Tell them IQ is coming for them.”

  Chapter Six

  No Loose Ends

  Another fucked-up day on the 710 at rush hour. Sal was late and there was a stain on the new suit. It was a smudge, kind of oily, maybe from that In-N-Out double-meat cheeseburger or maybe the fucked-up car. What difference did it make? Annie would be pissed if the stain was from their new Rolls-Royce. The suit was uncomfortable, the cheap fabric smelled like chemicals, as if their house three blocks from Long Beach Gas and Oil didn’t stink already. The suit was for a job interview. Work had petered out and there was nothing left to do but go legit. Of course the fake social security number had gummed up the computer. It was embarrassing, getting out of there before somebody called the authorities.